Which attendance numbers are right?

Chris, a reader here at allthingsdiz.com, posed the following question in the comments section of my recent post on the 3rd Quarter Conference Call highlights post:

‘What do you think about reports that attendance is really down for summer? True? I've only heard this anecdotally, but it seems to be coming from lots of sources.’

I started to answer Chris in a response comment, but my thoughts got so big I decided to turn it into a post so we don’t get lost in the Comments part of the blog!

---------------------

That's a good question I'm not sure any of us have a good idea about except Disney. I've read many of the same reports presumably as you with pictures, wait times and what not showing a very dead park, especially during the weekdays.

Disney on the other hand says attendance is inline with this time last year in general, the hotel rate utilization is still in the 90+% category and they just raised admission ticket prices. So my bet is that unless Disney is lying to everybody (which I strongly doubt) then demand would appear to still be fairly strong. Bob Iger says he is happy with where things are given the general state of the economy anyhow.

What Disney doesn’t break out for us, though I’m sure they know what the answers are if not literally than at least statistically, is the demographics of the gate count: adults vs. children, type of ticket, discounted tickets, etc. All we get is a pure gate count, so it’s entirely possible that the wait times are down for some of the larger rides due to a shift in the types of people visiting. Maybe more people are coming with younger children and older adults who don’t or can’t ride the thrill rides? I guarantee that the line at Peter Pan is STILL WAY too long (despite FastPass).

The same can be said for the food in the Parks. I read somewhere that someone said recently that they got a walkup to Le Cellier. That fact seems to me to be 2 fold in possible cause. First, it won’t be that way now that free food is in effect. And second, I offer the general observation that park attendance =/ (does not equal) strong dining attendance, especially in the more expensive sit down restaurants when people are on a fixed budget. They do tell us that per guest spending in the parks is down quite a bit from last year, which would seem to be in line with this theory, even though that includes merchandise as well. Those are again only numbers Disney really knows, but they are separate, though possibly correlated, measures.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the late fall free food where they are ‘tiering’ the service based on the hotel your staying at. We probably won’t have any definitive data there either, but if Disney brings it back later, then I’d say that says something.

The other demographic they don’t break out is per resort occupancy, just overall occupancy rates. My guess is that, as usually would be the case, the Value resorts are stuffed to the gills, the camping side of the campground is booked solid, and it’s not until you get into the Moderate and Deluxe resorts that you start to see occupancy drop.

If Wikipedia is right (though we could cross reference with The Unofficial Guide if we really wanted too), then by my calculations there are about 22,216 hotel rooms distributed as follows:

• 8,324 Value Rooms (about 37% of the total)
• 7,089 Moderate Rooms (about 32% of the total)
• 6,803 Deluxe Rooms (about 30% of the total)

That last figure is not counting Shades of Green or Swan/Dolphin, nor any DVC resorts. That means we can get 90% occupancy with all the Value rooms (37%), say most of the Moderate rooms (how about 28%?), which leaves a Deluxe room occupancy of only about 24%. Those are just my guesses of course. We also haven’t touched off site stays, nor Season Pass members.

So overall I’d say that based on Disney’s conference call and Len and Fred’s Crowd Calendar and updates that Disney attendance is still fairly strong. I’d further guess based on the train of thought illustrated here though, that it’s the demographics that have shifted, making for a shift in wait times based on the types of rides people want or are able to ride and the places budget conscious eaters want or can afford to eat.

That’s a long winded answer, and now you know why I made it a post instead of replying in the Comments!

Feel free to expound, add thoughts or what not in the Comments to this post…